longing
by songs
Summary: they never do reach each other, in the end; — ო zutara.


__**title: **longing

**pairing: **zuko ო katara.

**disclaimer: **own nothing.

* * *

_i want you more than anything.**  
**_

_but we both know,  
_

_it was never meant to be.  
_

* * *

_Fourteen._

She kisses him the day before she leaves for the South Pole.

It is thoughtless and unplanned; one moment, she is peering over the plains of paper on his desk, the next, he is facing her, away from the work of the Fire Lord, away from the half-open door and straight into the blue of her eyes. The heat slips off of his skin like sunlight; the red-rim of his scar blares like thunder in her mind, and her fingers trace over its comet-shape from memory.

"I..." Her voice trickles off like the water in her seal-skin. They haven't spoken much since The Incident, since the nova-burst of a scar had settled onto his stomach, since she watched lightning pulse through his veins. Since he nearly _died for her_, since his sister was sent away.

She wants to say something profound. She doesn't want the Zuko she has finally learned to know and care for to drown himself in the duties of the Fire Lord, to lose himself in this nation. She wants to say goodbye because she needs to go home, needs to figure things out with Aang (because she knows, if anything, _he_ loves her, and she has to try, she always has to try).

…She wants to say goodbye because she thinks they need closure. Something has changed between them since that day; she catches his glances as often as he notices her own. Girl of water, boy (man, king, lord) of fire. They do not mix-

"You're leaving," he finally says, his raspy voice invading her pensive quiet. He angles his head away from her, so it is not so improper. So the warm feeling in her belly dissipates and her eyes glaze over in embarrassment. "The palace won't be the same without...everyone." _You, _he means, he means _you._

"Mm," she murmurs, and it is wispy and broken-sounding. "I need to return to my home, need to help my people. Just like you do."

He gives her a look; there's awe, there's admiration, and something else lingering there that makes her look away. "They're lucky to have you," is all he says, and the feeling flushes through her bones, whispering from her pores like wishes and water-vapor and she finds her words stumbling over each other.

"Zuko, the Fire Nation is _blessed _to finally have someone like you. Someone who will change the world and..." She stops for a moment, recognizing herself. "I guess this is goodbye?"

"Yeah." A beat. "I-We'll all miss you...you _all_."

These words are working against them. Actions speak louder than words, she thinks; the memory of him gliding in front of a web of lightning imprints itself into her eyes, and she _knows _she cannot leave this moment to words. She doesn't know when she'll see him again. She-

She finds her lips searing his skin like boiling oceans, marking him with something she cannot name.

"I'll miss you too," she manages, and she bustles off, glad for the empty, unassuming hallway outside of his office. The red is in her cheeks like rosy embers, and she blinks a few times. There are tears, which is not unusual for a waterbender. Water is in her blood, her bones, her soul.

It's bound to pour out of her sometime.

X

_Seventeen_

Her neck is heavy with a newly-carved promise.

Aang had proposed, she said yes, and her mother's necklace now lays glimmering on her night-stand.

She sits alone sometimes, staring at the twinkling ice-walls, and wonders if this is it. Peace. Love.

Everything.

X

_Nineteen._

Five years. They dance around it all for five years; they exchange letters dotted with small, petty things and words and _Oh, thank you for the ice sculpture _and _No problem, how is the weather in the Fire Nation_?

And Katara is engaged to the Avatar and Zuko has his childhood sweetheart and the weddings will be larger than life. Katara _loves _Aang; he is everything she could ask for.

But there are some things she is afraid to ask aloud.

So she puts hawk-quill to parchment, traces out the calligraphy of _his_ name, and then fists a whip of water onto the the word and trashes it.

She walks outside, looking for Aang.

X

_Twenty-One_

They are going to the Fire Nation. There is no politics in the visit: no weddings, no invasions, no treaties. It is a reunion of friends who had seen the end of a war together, who had, together, branded time and made for a new era in the world.

(Friends who took lightning for each other, who trusted each other with their lives, who kissed and never told, who yearn and say nothing.)

They go on Appa. Aang takes the reigns and Katara, Suki, Toph, and Sokka reminisce about the glory days and the camp-fires and bending practice. Suki and Sokka have a little boy named Kato, and Toph has grown into a woman- grown beautiful, her raven hair ghosting over her shoulders, and her milk-glass eyes framed by high cheekbones and thick lashes.

It takes days, and the days pluck up memories like lilies. It washes over them like rain and Katara cannot help but feel like somebody is missing.

Appa lands in the courtyard of the palace after five starry nights. Aang palm-feeds the sky-bison apples as Iroh greets them, a pot of tea in his hands.

Zuko is nowhere to be seen, and Katara feels something like disappointment rattle her chest.

They stay for a week, and for a week Katara catches snappy glimpses of the Fire Lord. There is a ball and a feast and there is small talk. There are long-suffering glances, there is gold on ocean-blue, but that is all there is.

Longing.

X

_Thirty_

The moment Katara hears about the assassination attempt on the Fire Lord, she leaves.

Her belly is round with five months of air-child life, and Aang is off making peace La-knows-where, but she still scrawls out the note _Going to the Fire Nation. Zuko needs me. I'll be back. _Aang had taken an Earth-Nation ship when he left, so Appa was still at their home in the Western Air Temple.

She hums a soft, _Yip-yip_, and they are off.

…

Days later, she is stumbling into the Fire Nation Palace, Appa munching down fruit in the garden. She is running without sleep and slumber and food; there is red rimming the rivers of her eyes, and her cheeks have thinned considerably. It is not good for the baby, and she reminds herself to eat quickly after she sees Zuko.

"Where is he?" she demands of the guards, and it only takes minutes for her to be ushered in the direction the Fire Lord's office.

She gapes when she sees him through the crack of the door, hunched over his papers, red-stained bandages wrapped around his midsection. On his desk, there is a picture of him and a woman, _Mai_, she remembers, and a little, squirrel-cheeked girl-child.

Oh.

It is only when she stands in the doorway that she feels ashamed. Humiliated. Here she is, a married woman with a child on the way, half-starved and crazed with her hair standing on the ends, staring hopelessly at the boy (man, she thinks, _married man_) who she had always felt something for. Something she could not name, and so-

She turns around and leaves.

X

_Thirty-Eigh_t

For years, he sends her letters, asking about her visit. She never responds, and when Aang asks about it, she never answers.

She is a silly, fickle woman, she supposes.

And so, when she looks at her daughter Kya, thin, wiry, and fairy-like, stumbling through the Western Air Temple's gardens, she wonders if she could ever imagine her with fire in her fists and eyes.

But Kya bends water. And one day, her son Bumi will bend nothing. Tenzin will bend the air he breathes and Katara will love them more than life itself and will be able to (pretend) accept that she feels nothing for the fire.

X

_Forty-Five_

The Fire Lady Mai, Katara learns, has passed on due to her frail health.

Katara, feeling foolish, wraps her mother's necklace around an empty sheet of parchment. There are no words, but it says everything she was too afraid to write.

She receives a letter back, a month later. It says _Thank you, _and it is enough.

X

_Fifty-Four_

The Fire Lord does not remarry, and for some reason, Katara is relieved.

X

_Sixty-Eight_

Aang is dead, and Katara's world falls apart.

She returns to the Southern Water Tribe, where she learns that a girl, Korra, was born.

X

_Seventy-Eight_

Tenzin and Pema take Jinora to the Fire Nation. She really gets along with Fire Lord Zuko's grandson, Azo, her son writes.

Korra is ten years old, and a remarkable waterbender. Water is the first element the Avatar masters, and Katara is proud to say she helps train the second generation.

X

Eighty-Five

She does not see him before he dies.

When Katara dies at one-hundred, having trained two Avatars in her lifetime, having reestablished the Southern-Water Tribe and having loved a man without ever being his lover, this is her greatest regret.


End file.
